MandM: Euthyphro

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Wednesday, 25 March 2009

Tooley, The Euthyphro Objection and Divine Commands: Part II

In my last post I made some critical remarks on Michael Tooley’s critique of William Lane Craig’s version of the divine command theory. Tooley contends that this theory implies the conditional that if God had commanded mankind to torture one another as much as possible then it would be obligatory to torture one another as much as possible, and makes the claim that this conditional is false. I argued that the arguments for the claim the conditional is false fail.
In the second half of the post I criticised Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s claim;

Moreover, even if God in fact never would or could command us to rape, the divine command theory still implies the counter-factual that, if God did command us to rape, then we would have a moral obligation to rape. That is absurd.[1] [Emphasis added]

As I noted, Armstrong’s suggestion that the conditional is obviously false is far from obvious and in fact, runs contrary to the standard view of such conditionals in modal logic.

In this post, I want to examine a defence of Armstrong’s position, that proposed by Louise Anthony in her article “Atheism as Perfect Piety.” I will argue Anthony’s defence also fails. I will then offer some reasons for thinking that the conditional Tooley cites is not false but true.

Louise Anthony’s Defence of Armstrong’s Argument
Louise Anthony suggests a repair to Armstrong’s argument. She notes,

In standard modal logics, any counterfactual with an impossible antecedent is true. … Results like this are widely regarded as regrettable, in so far as one looks to formal modal logic to reconstruct ordinary reasoning with counterfactuals. I am going with ordinary intuitions, which do not treat all counterfactuals with impossible antecedents as true. [2]

Anthony, here, claims that the standard view of modal logic is mistaken. Not all counterfactuals with impossible antecedents are true. An obvious problem here is that even if this is the case, it does not follow that the particular counterfactual being discussed here is false. The fact that some counterfactuals with impossible antecedents are false does not entail that this particular one is false.

Suppose, however, one puts this argument to one side and grants that the counterfactual is false. What follows? I am inclined to think not much.

Consider the structure of Anthony’s argument. She notes that the claim that right and wrong is coextensive with divine commands entails that if, per impossible, God commands torturing people as much as possible then it is obligatory to do so. The problem is that an analogous line of reasoning applies to any ethical theory. Three examples will demonstrate this.

First, consider utilitarianism, the theory that an action is obligatory if it maximises the balance of good consequences over bad consequences. It follows from this that if torturing people as much as possible maximises good consequences over bad then torturing people as much as possible is obligatory. The utilitarian’s protestation that such a situation is impossible is unsuccessful because even if this situation is impossible the conditional is, according to Anthony, still absurd and hence, discredits the theory.

Similar things apply with Kantianism, the view that an action is obligatory if and only if it treats rational creatures with respect; that is, treats them always as ends and never merely as means. It follows that if torturing people as much as possible treats them with respect then it is obligatory to torture people as much as possible. Of course, the Kantian would object that torturing people as much as possible is never something that constitutes respect but again, that does not matter. Even if the antecedent is impossible, Anthony maintains that the conditional is false and for this reason the theory should be rejected.

The same is true with virtue ethics, the view that an action is obligatory if and only if, it would be performed by a virtuous person. It follows that if a virtuous person would torture people as much as possible then torturing people as much as possible is obligatory. Again, the virtue ethicist will protest that a virtuous person would never want to do that but again, if Anthony is correct, this is irrelevant. Her whole point is that even if the antecedent is impossible, an ethical theory with this implication is absurd.

I maintain the same is true of any meta-ethical theory. Let P be any property one considers to be logically equivalent to the property of being obligatory. It will be true that this meta-ethical theory entails that if P is possessed by the action of torturing one another as much as possible then torturing other people as much as possible will be obligatory.

Anthony’s argument is essentially that if we postulate logically impossible situations, absurd and false implications follow. Questions about what God would do in impossible situations is, as Craig points out, “is like wondering whether, if there were a round square, its area would equal the square of one of its sides. And what would it matter how one answered, since what is imagined is logically incoherent?”[3]

Reasons for Thinking that the Conditional is True
I have argued that attempts to show that the conditional, if God had commanded mankind to torture one another as much as possible then it would be obligatory to torture one another as much as possible, is false all fail. I am inclined to go one step further and maintain not just that there is no reason for thinking that the conditional is false but that it is, on reflection, obviously true.

The conditional states that torturing one another as much as possible is obligatory, in a particular situation; that is, a situation where a perfectly good omniscient being commands it. Now it seems inconceivable to me that any action, torture included, could be wrong under such circumstances. If torturing one another as much as possible is gratuitously evil and could never be obligatory then an informed perfectly good being would not command it. On the other hand, if torturing one another as much as possible had certain features that would lead a perfectly good being to overlook the evils the action contains and commend it then it would seem that torturing people in these circumstances would not be wrong. The reason we are inclined to take the counterfactual as absurd is because we think it is absurd that a perfectly good being would command anything of the sort.

[1] Walter Sinnott-Armstrong “Why Traditional Theism Cannot Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics Eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2008) 106.
[2] Louise Anthony “Atheism as Perfect Piety” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics, Eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2008) 82.
[3] William Lane Craig “This Most Gruesome of Guests” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics Eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2008) 172.

Monday, 23 March 2009

Tooley, The Euthyphro Objection and Divine Commands: Part I

In a debate with William Lane Craig at the University of Colorado, Michael Tooley stated,

There is a theory which has the consequence that there cannot be objective moral laws unless God exists---that's the so-called 'divine command theory of morality'. What it says is that an action is wrong because and only because God forbids it. And an action is obligatory because and only because God demands it. If that theory were right, then there would be an argument in support of the claim that Dr. Craig has advanced. But that theory is quite a hopeless theory because of its implications. One of its implications, for example, is that if God had commanded mankind to torture one another as much as possible, then it would follow that that action was obligatory. Perhaps Dr. Craig would be happy with that consequence. But many people, including many religious thinkers, are very unhappy with that consequence, and so have rejected the divine command theory of morality.[1]

Tooley here appeals to a version of the Euthyphro dilemma; his argument contains two premises.

First, that a divine command theory has a certain implication; it implies the following conditional, if God had commanded mankind to torture one another as much as possible then it would be obligatory to torture one another as much as possible.

Second, Tooley thinks many people would be unhappy with this implication. Now I think Tooley is correct that the aforementioned conditional is an implication of the divine command theory. His phrasing of the second premise, however, is problematic; his stated reason is that many people are not happy with this implication but it is unclear why this is an objection. The fact that some people do not like an implication is hardly an objection against it. What is relevant is whether the conditional is true. For this reason, I take it Tooley is engaging in a rhetorical flourish and actually contends that this conditional is false.

The crucial contention of Tooley’s critique, then, is that the conditional, if God had commanded mankind to torture one another as much as possible then it would be obligatory to torture one another as much as possible,is false. There are some problems with this contention. There are no reasons for thinking the conditional is false and there are good reasons for thinking the conditional is true. In the next two blogs I will defend these claims.

Reasons for Thinking the Conditional is False
The crucial contention of Tooley’s critique then is that the conditional if God had commanded mankind to torture one another as much as possible then it would be obligatory to torture one another as much as possible, is false.

Unfortunately Tooley provides no argument for this conclusion, he simply asserts it. An examination of the literature suggests that typically two lines of argument are offered for this contention. Given Tooley offers no new reasons of his own, I will assume that he has one of these in mind.

David Brink’s Argument against the Conditional
The first is mentioned by Robert K. Garcia and Nathan L. King

DCT [divine command theory] implies that it is possible for any kind of action, such as rape, to not be wrong. But it seems intuitively impossible for rape not to be wrong. So, DCT is at odds with our commonsense intuitions about rape.[2]

A similar line of argument is made by David Brink who states,

We might also notice a counter intuitive implication of voluntarism. Voluntarism implies that all moral truths are contingent on what God happens to approve. … Thus, for example, had God had not condemned genocide and rape, these things would not have been wrong, or, if God were to approve these things they would become morally acceptable. But these are awkward commitments, inasmuch as this sort of conduct seems necessarily wrong.[3]

Brink here uses the examples of genocide and rape; however, I suggest that he would say the same thing about Tooley’s example of ‘commanding people to torture each other;’ hence, for clarity I will stick with Tooley’s example.

Brink’s inference here has two premises; the first [1] is that the conditional, if God had commanded mankind to torture one another as much as possible then it would be obligatory to torture one another as much as possible, implies that it is possible for the act of ‘torturing people as much as possible’ to be obligatory. The second premise [2] is that it is impossible for the act of ‘torturing people as much as possible’ to be obligatory; such things are necessarily wrong, that is, wrong in all logically possible worlds. If [1] and [2] hold, the conditional Tooley refers to is false.

The problem with this inference is that [1] is false. The conditional uses the term “if”, if God had … but this does not by itself imply that there is a logically possible world where such an action is obligatory. To get this conclusion one needs the additional premise that there exists a possible world where God issues such a command. Brink does not offer any reason for thinking this is the case; he seems simply to take it for granted.

It seems dubious, however, that this assumption is true. Tooley defines God as “omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect”.[4][Emphasis added] Similarly, in his debate with Craig he states,

I want to begin by briefly indicating how I'm going to understand the term 'God' in this next discussion. My view is that the question one should ask is, "What characteristics should an object possess in order to be an appropriate object of religious attitudes?"

I think that the answer to that is that a being, to be characterizable as God in that sense, should be a personal being, should be a being that is morally perfect, a being that is omnipotent, and a being that is omniscient..[5][Emphasis added]

So, as Tooley defines his terms, the claim that there is a possible world where God commands people to ‘torture one another as much as possible’ is true only if there is a possible world where a morally perfect omniscient person would command this action.

This is unlikely. The very reason Tooley cites the example, of ‘torturing others as much as possible,’ is because he views it as a paradigm of an action which can never be obligatory. Similarly, Brink mentions actions like rape and genocide because he thinks it’s impossible that such actions could be permissible. However, if this is the case then a morally perfect being would never command such actions. The argument by Brink, therefore, is unsound.

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s Argument
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong suggests a second line of argument for the falsity of the conditional, if God had commanded mankind to torture one another as much as possible then it would be obligatory to torture one another as much as possible. Armstrong states,

Moreover, even if God in fact never would or could command us to rape, the divine command theory still implies the counter-factual that, if God did command us to rape, then we would have a moral obligation to rape. That is absurd.[6] [Emphasis added]

Armstrong uses the example of rape in place of Tooley’s ‘torturing one another as much as possible’. He claims that “even if God in fact never would or could command” such actions, the relevant counterfactual still follows and “that is absurd.”

Armstrong gives no argument for the claim that the counterfactual is absurd, he simply asserts it as obvious. The problem is that it is not obvious. If there is no logically possible world where God issues such a command (and Armstrong concedes for the sake of argument that this is the case) then the conditional (which Armstrong refers to as the counterfactual) has a logically impossible antecedent; it is equivalent to statements like “if there were a round square, its area would equal the square of one of its sides.”[7] Whether statements like this are true or false is a difficult issue in contemporary modal logic. In fact, according to the standard view of modal logic, a conditional with a logically impossible antecedent is always true.

Armstrong’s suggestion, then, that the conditional is obviously true is far from obvious and in fact, runs contrary to the standard view of such conditionals in modal logic.

In my next post I will look at attempts to overcome this.

[1] Michael Tooley and William Lane Craig A Classic Debate on the Existence of God held at the University of Colorado at Boulder, November 1994, transcript available at http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5307#section_3 accessed on March 21st 2009.
[2] Robert K. Garcia and Nathan L. King “Introduction” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics, Eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2008) 11.
[3] David O Brink “The Autonomy of Ethics” The Cambridge Companion to Atheism ed Michael Martin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) 152.
[4] Michael Tooley “Does God Exist,” in Knowledge of God Ed. Alvin Plantinga & Michael Tooley (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2008) 72.
[5] Tooley and Craig A Classic Debate on the Existence of God.
[6] Walter Sinnott-Armstrong “Why Traditional Theism Cannot Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics Eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2008) 106.
[7] William Lane Craig “This Most Gruesome of Guests” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics, Eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2008), 172

RELATED POSTS:
Tooley, The Euthyphro Objection and Divine Commands: Part II
The Euthyphro Dilemma Against Divine Commands I: Avoiding Strawmen
The Euthyphro Objection II: Arbitrariness
Euthyphro Objection III:The Redundancy of God is Good
On the Meta-Euthyphro Objection
Brink on Dialetical Equilibrium
On a Common Equivocation
Patrick Nowell Smith on Divine Commands
Permissible Lies
Theology, Morality and Reason
The Meta-Ethical Argument for Christian Theism: A Response to Richard Chappell
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, William Lane Craig and the Argument from Harm Part I

Saturday, 18 October 2008

On the Meta-Euthyphro Objection

According to proponents of the Euthyphro Objection, defenders of a Divine Command Theory of Ethics face a dilemma, actions are morally-required either because:

(i) God commands them;
or,
(ii) God commands them because they are morally-required.

The latter (ii) entails that actions are right and wrong independently of God’s commands and as such, a Divine Command Theory of Ethics is false. The former (i), however, is said to be problematic for two reasons: [a] if things are morally-required because God prohibits them, then God’s commands are arbitrary; if God commanded gratuitous torture then gratuitous torture would be morally-required. Moreover [b], the claim that God is good is emptied of any substantive content; to say God is good is simply to say God does what He wills.

I am unimpressed with this argument. In previous posts I have argued why. Despite the popularity of this line of argument (seen by its repetition in almost every first year ethics text book I have read) I think these two arguments are not powerful at all. On a Judeo-Christian concept of God, God is understood to have a certain type of character and to possess certain virtues. As the Westminister Confession states, God is:

[M]ost loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him; and withal, most just, and terrible in His judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.

Once this is realised, one can take (i) and avoid the problems [a] and [b] that are supposed to afflict the affirmation of this horn of the dilemma that the Euthyphro Objection raises. One can avoid [a] because it is not coherent to claim that a being with certain virtues would command actions like gratuitous torture. Likewise, one can avoid [b] because claiming God possesses certain character traits does not commit one to the claim that his goodness consists merely in doing as he wills, and these traits provide substantive content to the claim that God is good.

In the discussion here Mark V posted an astute response:

“You say that God is good because he posseses certain character traits that we regard as good. But why do we regard them as good? Is it because God possesses these traits or because they conform to some external standard of goodness?”

If I understand Mark’s objection here, he is suggesting that even if my solution to the Euthyphro Objection is successful, the same problem arises again on another level, now we are faced with the same dilemma all over again with regard to the goodness of God’s character traits. Either they are good because God possesses them or God possesses them because they are good.

Although Mark doesn’t say so, I think he means to suggest that the same problems with each option of the Euthyphro Objection also apply to this new issue. If a person claims that God possesses these traits because they are good then goodness exists independently of, and prior to God, which appears to compromise the doctrine of divine aseity. However, if a person claims that God’s traits are good because he possesses them then analogues to the arbitrariness [a] and emptiness [b] objections apply. Let’s call this line of argument the Meta-Euthyphro Objection.

I want to suggest that neither option Mark suggests is quite right. It is not the case that God’s character traits are good because he possesses them, neither is it the case that they are possessed by God because they are good. Instead I want to suggest that these traits are good because God prefers himself to have them.

An obvious rejoinder to this claim is that it really avoids the issue. Whether God’s character is good because he prefers himself to have it instead of it being good because he possesses it does not make an iota of difference. I am still faced with analogues of [a] the arbitrariness and [b] the emptiness objections aren’t I?

Actually I think the answer to this is no. To see why, note that when Mark asks:

“You say that God is good because he posseses certain character traits that we
regard as good. But why do we regard them as good?”

He grants there is nothing problematic about God having these traits but rather that the question is what makes Him having them a good thing? But this fact disarms both the arbitrariness [a] and emptiness [b] objections.

Turning to [a], the arbitrariness objection, when this objection is applied to the claim that God’s character traits are good because God prefers to have them, the [a] contends that God’s preference of the traits in question is arbitrary; after all, he could just as well have preferred to be vicious and cruel, and if he did, it would be good to be vicious and cruel.

The problem is that this is based on a false assumption. If God has the character traits in question then it is not true that he could have preferred just any traits; a person who has the following traits will not desire to be a vicious or cruel person "loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in ... truth, forgiving..." Holding these traits means that there are certain things that one does not desire or want to see happen. That is part of what having such traits means.

Similar things apply to the emptiness charge [b]. Just as before, one could say that when we say that God is good, we mean that he possesses certain character traits which are normally recognised as paradigmatic examples of goodness. Now the suggestion that a trait is good because a being who displays paradigmatically good character traits prefers it does not seem trivial at all.

I conclude then that the Meta-Euthyphro Objection does not fair any better than its predecessor; one can meaningfully attribute goodness to God and say that God’s duties constitute our obligations, and we can do so without making goodness independent of God. I maintain then that the standard textbook objections remain unsound.

Thursday, 1 November 2007

Euthyphro Objection III:The Redundancy of God is Good

In my previous post I criticised Singer’s utilisation of the arbitrariness objection against voluntarism. Singer’s last objection comes as a rejoinder to the line of response sketched.

Some modern theists have attempted to extricate themselves from this type of
dilemma by maintaining that God is good and so could not possibly approve of
torture; but these theists are caught in a trap of their own making, for what
can they possibly mean by the assertion that God is good? That God is approved
by God?[i]

The problems with this response have already been demonstrated. Singer suggests that the modern theists who propose this response hold that ‘good’ means approved by God. However, this is not what they propose. Some, like Quinn and Weirenga, suggest that what makes actions right or wrong are the commands of God. Adams holds that wrongness is the property of being contrary to God’s commands. Neither of these views entails that ‘God is good’ means ‘God is approved’ by God.

In order for Singer’s objection to be something other than a straw man, it needs to be reformulated to deal with theories like the ones actually proposed by defenders of Voluntarism. One such formulation is suggested, though not endorsed, by Edward Weirenga.

[I]f to be morally good is to do no wrong, and if what is wrong is what is
forbidden by God, then to say that God is good is just to say that he never does
what he forbids himself to do. But there is no moral value in never doing what
one forbids oneself to do.[ii]

This objection is problematic. Firstly, the last premise affirms that there is no moral value in never doing what one forbids oneself to do; i.e. there is no moral value in living by the standards you set yourself, so to speak. This is false. There very clearly is moral value in avoiding hypocrisy and hypocrisy involves, in part, not following the standards one lays down for one’s own behaviour. Moreover, the very notion at the heart of much contemporary, ethical theory is that of autonomy. Autonomy refers to the act of regulating one’s own behaviour in light of the laws or principles of which one approves.

Finally, note that Weirenga’s objection begins with “if to be morally good is to do no wrong ... then”. [Emphasis added]. The argument assumes that goodness is defined purely in terms of doing one’s duty. This was not claimed in the theory proposed and this assumption is at best controversial. Many ethical theories define ‘right’ in terms of a relationship to what is good and others see rightness as involving side constraints upon the quest for good. At best, what is needed is an argument as to why a theist must accept such a definition and none has been offered.

Paul Faber notes that within Presbyterian tradition there are strong precedents for not characterising goodness this way. He notes how God’s goodness is characterised in the Westminster Confession.[iii]

[M]ost loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and
truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that
diligently seek Him; and withal, most just, and terrible in His judgments,
hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.[iv]

Here God’s goodness is not defined so much in terms of conformity to duties but in terms of various character traits or excellence. Virtues such as being loving, truthful, forgiving, etc, hating actions that are wrong, praising and rewarding what is right. Nothing in Voluntarism entails that God cannot have such attributes. Voluntarism might have this implication if it also maintained that God has such traits because he is required to or if the virtues mentioned cannot be attributed to God without defining them in terms of various commands he has issued. However, none of this is necessary. God does not have to have a duty to have something in order to have it and such things as being loving, truthful, forgiving, etc. can all be understood without specifying any divine command.

[i] Singer, Practical Ethics, 3-4.
[ii] Weirenga, The Nature of God, 222.
[iii] Paul Faber, “The Euthyphro Objection to Divine Normative Theories: A Response” Religious Studies 21 (1985): 564-567.
[iv] Westminster Confession of Faith, Ch. 2, Article 1, 145.

Wednesday, 31 October 2007

The Euthyphro Objection II: Arbitrariness

In his work Practical Ethics Singer proposes a version of the Euthyphro dilemma to criticise Voluntarist (a Divine command theory) views of ethics

Some theists say that ethics cannot do without religion because the very meaning
of “good” is nothing other than “what God approves”. Plato refuted a similar
view more than two thousand years ago by arguing that if the gods approve of
some actions it must be because those actions are good, in which case it cannot
be the gods’ approval that makes them good. The alternative view makes God’s
approval entirely arbitrary: if the gods had happened to approve of torture and
disapprove of helping our neighbours, torture would be good and helping our
neighbours bad.[i]

In my previous post pointed out that his version of the Euthyphro argument relies upon a straw man. Voluntarism is not typically proposed as a theory about what is good but is usually restricted to deontic properties such as right and wrong. Its worth noting however that, this fact is not fatal to Singer’s position; it is possible to develop analogies to the Euthyphro that do not rely on this straw man. James Rachels is an example In The Elements of Moral Philosophy James Rachel’s suggests that an action is right either because God commands it or he commands it because it is right. He then offers the same arguments Singer does to suggest that only by embracing the second horn of the dilemma which amounts to giving up Voluntarism, can one escape absurdity.[ii]

The key argument Singer raises against Voluntarism is, “if the gods had happened to approve of torture and disapprove of helping our neighbours, torture would be good and helping our neighbours bad”.[iii] Singer couches this objection in terms of goodness and badness but the same objection can be raised with regards to claims that Gods commands constitutes what is right and wrong. Rachels for example states that Voluntrism “leads to trouble” because “it represents Gods commands as arbitrary. It means God could have given different commands just as easily. He could have commanded us to be liars, and then lying, not truthfulness would be right”[iv]

The objection is that Voluntarism entails a certain, counter-factual conditional; to use Singer’s example, if God commanded torture then torture would not be wrong. While Singer does not state that this conditional is false, he appears to take it for granted that it is. After all, if the conditional were true then the fact that Voluntarism entails it would not constitute an objection to Voluntarism. Unfortunately, Singer provides no reason for thinking this conditional is false. He appears to think that it is obvious.

Phillip Quinn has given reasons for questioning this assumption. Quinn notes that a counter-factual conditional such as ‘If God commands torture then torture is not wrong’ is false only if the antecedent is true and the consequent false.[v] In other words, the conditional is only false in a situation where God in fact does command torture and torture in that situation is wrong. In order for Singer’s objection to be sound there needs to be a logically-possible situation in which God does offer the command in question and the action he commands is wrong. Is such a scenario logically possible?

It is doubtful it is. God is perfectly and maximally good. Hence, the first premise is true only if a perfectly-good being would command an action such as the torture of children. This is unlikely. The claim that a perfectly-good being would command something morally abhorrent is on the face of it incoherent. Hence, it is unlikely that such a situation is possible.

A former teacher of mine, Mane Hajdin, suggested to me that this assertion is too hasty a few years ago he offered me the following criticism.

[I]t is assumed that being good involves being loving, forgiving, etc, in all
possible worlds. But why should we assume that? Why aren’t there worlds in which
being good involves being cruel, ruthless, etc? To simply assume that, in this
context, may leave the impression of begging the question

Roy Perett suggested to me that that there are possible states of affairs where the contingent and factual structure of the world would be so different that what we take as paradigms of virtue in fact are not. In such a world, torture may be conducive to human flourishing or be, in fact, a virtuous activity.There may be something to this response. The problem with this response is that it still fails to provide reasons for thinking that the above-mentioned conditional is false. In order for this conditional to be false it must be logically possible not just for God to command an action but for that action to be wrong in the given situation. Perett and Hajdin provide us reasons for thinking that it is possible for a perfectly-good being to command actions such as torture or creulty. However, the situations envisaged are ones in which torture is not, in fact, wrong. In the situation Perett envisages, torture is, in fact, virtuous and in Hajdin’s torture is good. In such examples it is the virtuous nature of torture that makes it plausible to assume that a perfectly-good being could command it.

It remains doubtful whether a logically-possible situation in which God commands an action and that action is wrong could exist. This is because a perfectly-good being would not command wrongdoing. To the extent that we think a perfectly-good being could command a particular action, we have reasons for thinking the action permissible. On the other hand, to the extent that we think it is impossible for the action to be wrong we find it impossible to envisage how a perfectly-good being could command it.

[i] Singer, Practical Ethics, 3.
[ii] James Rachels, Elements of Moral Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986) 42.
[iii] Singer, Practical Ethics, 3.
[iv] Rachels The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 42
[v] Phillip Quinn, “Divine Command Theory,” in Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory, ed. H Lafollette (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 2000) 70.

Sunday, 28 October 2007

The Euthyphro Dilemma Against Divine Commands I: Avoiding Strawmen

Perhaps the most common argument against an appeal to divine commands in ethical reasoning is the Euthyphro dilemma, first articulated by Plato and utilised by numerous critics of divine commands ever since. A representative example of this line of argument occurs in Peter Singer’s widely-acclaimed monograph Practical Ethics. In the first chapter of Practical Ethics Singer offers the following argument.

[E]thics is not something intelligible only in the context of religion. I shall treat ethics entirely independent of religion.

Some theists say that ethics cannot do without religion because the very meaning of “good” is nothing other than “what God approves”. Plato refuted a similar view more than two thousand years ago by arguing that if the gods approve of some actions it
must be because those actions are good, in which case it cannot be the gods’ approval that makes them good. The alternative view makes God’s approval entirely arbitrary: if the gods had happened to approve of torture and disapprove of helping our neighbours, torture would be good and helping our neighbours bad.[i]

Several features of this critique are noteworthy. Singer attacks a position known in the literature as Voluntarism (also called the divine command theory of ethics) that he construes as the view that “the very meaning of “good” is nothing other than “what God approves.” He bases this on the testimony of “some theists”. Singer’s argument here consists of three stages. He proposes the famous dilemma proposed by Socrates in Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro. He then claims that Voluntarism makes God’s commands arbitrary. He asserts that acceptance of Voluntarism entails that paradigmatically-evil actions such as torture could be good. He concludes that Voluntarism makes God’s goodness redundant,

Some modern theists have attempted to extricate themselves from this type of dilemma by maintaining that God is good and so could not possibly approve of torture; but these theists are caught in a trap of their own making, for what can they possibly mean by the assertion that God is good? That God is approved by God?[ii]

In the next few post I will respond to the Euthyphro dillemia, In this post I will comment upon Singer’s description of his opponents’ position and suggest it is a straw man. In the next few posts I will asses the arguments he proposes and argue they are unsuccessful. Contrary to what is commonly asserted in ethics textbooks and first year philosophy lectures, I do not think the Euthyphro dillemia is sound

As I stated above, Singer’s argument is an attack upon a position known in the literature as ‘Voluntarism’. Schneewind notes that in the late Middle Ages two schools emerged as to the relationship between God and the existence of an objective law. The first and older position is known as Intellectualism. In this view, God does not create morality; rather, God’s will is guided by his intellectual knowledge of eternal moral standards. The second position is Voluntarism. Voluntarism grounded the moral law not so much in God’s intellect but in his will. God himself creates the moral law.[iii]

It is worth noting at this juncture that Voluntarism is only one possible way of construing the nature of divine law and since Singer only offers an argument against this position, even if his argument is sound it fails to establish that the idea of divine law is problematic. Nevertheless, even as a critique of Voluntarism the argument appears to attack a straw man.

Singer construes Voluntarism as claiming “the very meaning of ‘good’ is nothing other than ‘what God approves.’” It appears then that Singer characterises Voluntarism as a theory about the meaning of the evaluative term “good”; however, this is a caricature of Voluntarism.

Few, if any, notable defenders of Voluntarism propose it as a theory about the meaning of the term ‘good’. This is demonstrated by examining the literature of those contemporary theists who do defend versions of Voluntarism. A notable, contemporary defender of Voluntarism is Robert Adams. In Divine Command Ethics Modified Again and later in his monograph Finite and Infinite Good, Adams puts forward the view that “ethical wrongness is (i.e., is identical with) the property of being contrary to the commands of a loving God”.[iv] [Emphasis original]

Note two things here; firstly, Adams does not offer a theory about ‘the good’ but explicitly limits his theory to deontological properties such as wrongness. Secondly, his theory is not about the meaning of terms; rather it is a metaphysical claim about identity.

This last distinction is important. Contemporary philosophy of language offers several examples of this distinction between two terms having the same meaning and two things being identical. One of the most famous is the relationship between water and H20. Water is H20. This is a claim of identity. The liquid on earth that we call water is hydrogen hydroxide. However, this is not a claim of meaning. The claim that water is H20 is not an analytic truth that is true in virtue of the meaning of the words, rather it is a claim discovered by empirical investigation. Moreover, a competent language user could refer to water and understand the meaning of this term without needing to know about the atomic structure H20. Similar examples are available with such claims as ‘the morning star is the evening star’ or ‘Superman is Clark Kent.’ In each case, we have a statement of identity that is distinct from the claim that two words have the same meaning. Adams then explicitly denies he is proposing the position Singer attributes to modern theists.

Similar things can be said about the other major defenders of Voluntarism. William Alston holds that divine commands are constitutive of deontological properties and notes Adam’s identity claim as a paradigm of the type of relationship he is defending.[v]

Philip Quinn defends a version of Voluntarism that is limited to the deontological status of actions.

In speaking of the deontological status of an action, I mean to refer to whether it has such properties as being morally permitted, being morally forbidden or prohibited, and being morally obligatory or required.[vi]

Quinn argues that God’s commands cause or bring about these properties. He specifically denies that he is offering a theory of ‘the good’ in general or that the relationship between God’s commands and moral properties is one of meaning. In fact, he argues against such a view.[vii]

Edward Weirenga defends a similar theory proposing that divine commands are those properties of actions that make them possess deontic properties such as right and wrong. He does not affirm that the word ‘good’ means commanded by God.[viii] Similarly, John Hare argues, “that what makes something obligatory for us is that God commands it”.[ix]

This is not just true of contemporary defenders of Voluntarism. In a survey of the historical literature, Janine Marie Idziak notes that, historically, Voluntarism was usually understood as a theory about what makes actions right and wrong and not a theory about the meaning of moral terms.[x] Moreover, historically, Voluntarists such as Locke[xi] and Puffendorf limited it to deontological properties and not to broader axiological properties such as goodness.

Robert Adams did defend a semantic theory in some of his earlier writings but, as noted, he later rejected his theory in favour of the one I sketched above. Moreover, the semantic theory Adams did initially defend bears little resemblance to the interpretation of Voluntarism made by Singer. Adams explicitly asserted that his theory was limited to analysing the meaning of the word wrong and not broader notions such as goodness. Moreover, it was limited to an analysis of what the word means in Judeo-Christian discourse not what the word meant in general.[xii]

It is difficult then to ascertain to whom exactly Singer is referring when he states “Some theists” hold this view and he fails to provide any citations as to whom he is referring. He appears to attack a straw man that has little resemblance to the theory as it has usually been articulated and defended in both historical and contemporary literature.

Not only does Singer attack a straw man but attention to the arguments he uses reveals that in the very next sentence he changes his interpretation from a theory of meaning to a dependence or causal theory. Immediately after stating, “the very meaning of “good” [is nothing other than] what God approves”, Singer follows Plato in suggesting that either something is good because God approves of it or God approves of it because it is good.[xiii] However, this presupposes that the relationship between divine approval and goodness is some kind of asymmetrical relationship where one entity in the relationship is temporally or ontologically prior to the other.

If, as Singer maintains, Voluntarism is the claim that “the very meaning of ‘good’ is nothing other than ‘what God approves’,” then the relationship between divine approval and goodness is not an asymmetrical relationship but rather a relationship of meaning so this dilemma simply does not apply.

Consider the following example. A person tells you that a bachelor is an unmarried man because the word bachelor means unmarried man. It would not make sense to respond to this claim ‘yes, but is he a bachelor because he is unmarried or is he unmarried because he is a bachelor?’ A person’s unmarried-ness is not prior to or the cause of his bachelorhood nor is his bachelorhood the cause of his being unmarried. His being unmarried is just a different way of referring to his bachelorhood. The relationship between a bachelor and an unmarried man is not causal; the relationship is one of meaning.

Immediately after stating that Voluntarism is a theory about the meaning of terms, Singer offers an objection that presupposes it is not a semantic theory but a causal one. However, only a few lines later he offers the following objection to Voluntarism “what can they [theists] possibly mean by the assertion that God is good? That God is approved by God?”[xiv] Here Singer’s objection relies on the claim that good means approved by God in order to generate the trap he refers to. Not only does Singer attack a straw man but also his target appears to change throughout the discussion. In fact, it appears to change in order to fit the objections raised.

[i] Singer,Practical Ethics, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 3.
[ii] Ibid., 3-4.
[iii] Jerome Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 8-9.
[iv] Robert Adams, “Divine Command Meta-Ethics Modified Again,” Journal of Religious Ethics 7:1 (1979): 76.
[v] William Alston, “Some Suggestions for Divine Command Theorists,” in Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy, ed. Michael Beaty (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 303-304.
[vi] Phillip Quinn, “An Argument for Divine Command Theory,” in Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy, ed. Michael Beaty (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 291.
[vii] Ibid., 293.
[viii] Edward Weirenga, The Nature of God: An Inquiry into the Divine Attributes, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), 215-27. See also “Utilitarianism and the Divine Command Theory,” American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1984): 311-318 and “A Defensible Divine Command Theory,” Nous 17 (1983): 387-408.
[ix] John Hare, God's Call: Moral Realism, God's Commands and Human Autonomy, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001), 49.
[x] Janine Maree Idziak, “In Search of Good Positive Reasons for an Ethics of Divine Commands: A Catalogue of Arguments,” Faith and Philosophy 6:1 (1989): 60.
[xi] For a defence of the claim that Locke was a voluntarist see Francis Oakley & Elliot W. Urdang, “Locke, Natural Law and God,” Natural Law Forum, 11 (1966): 92-109.
[xii] Robert Adams, “A Modified Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness” In Divine Commands and Morality, ed. Paul Helm (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 83-108.
[xiii] Singer, Practical Ethics, 4.
[xiv] Ibid., 3-4.
[xv] Ibid.
[xvi] Ibid., 40.

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